Here’s a thing. What’s happened to Andy Burnham? The affable scouser’s
leadership manifesto had an appealing tone: the red background enlivened by a blue streak on law and
order, aspiration and tax reform. But Burnham lost the race and since then he has been matching Ed Balls for bellicosity, opposing each of Michael Gove’s education reforms out of an
antediluvian tribal loyalty.
In recent weeks, Burnham has attacked cuts to the Educational Maintenance Allowance and the Building Schools for the Future fund. He’s at it again today. He will speak to the NASUWT teaching union later and he is expected to say:
‘This Tory-led Government’s education policy consists of broken promises, incompetence and wrong-headed reforms. Increasingly, we are seeing the sort of poor decision-making and lack of clarity from central Government that can only be called incompetence.’
Burnham’s point is that the education budget is falling in real terms, despite the government’s protestations. In fact, the government is targeting spending more effectively. It has pledged to spend more on education if pupil numbers increase, with funds following the pupil. Its structural reforms have also taken money from bureaucrats and given it to teachers to spend on the front line. More importantly, a consultation about is underway to examine how the education budget can be better distributed. These are measures that Andy Burnham might once have endorsed.
Burnham’s metamorphosis is not without risk. He is colluding with some extreme left-wing vested interests at the teaching unions, a posse of reactionaries who forced David Blunkett to hide in a cupboard at the 2001 NUT conference. The NUT is planning to defy the Trade Union Congress and strike unilaterally against pension reform, while the rest of the public sector negotiates with the government. Burnham has disowned the action, but he is tarred by association.
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